Cold War - GED Social Studies

Sputnik was a Soviet satellite. It was the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. This took place in 1957 and began the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Sputnik was important, geopolitically speaking, for promoting panic in the United States that America was getting left behind by the more scientifically and technologically advanced Soviets. It can be seen as the reason why America landed on the moon only twelve years later.

Although the Bay of Pigs Invasion was planned during the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, it was not actually carried out until 1961, during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It was a failed American invasion of Cuba and is important in the larger context of the Cold War for solidifying the complete deterioration of American relations with Cuba and for precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis only a year later.

The Bay of Pigs invasion took place in 1961. The CIA trained exiled Cuban troops that then touched down on Cuban soil with the intention of overthrowing the Cuban government and assassinating Fidel Castro. It did not succeed.

Yuri Gagarin was the first human in outer space. He was a citizen of the Soviet Union and was the first man to orbit the earth in 1961. His achievement was part of the early years of the Space Race when the Soviet Union was the first nation to put a satellite into orbit and the first to put a man into space.

The Cold War, which waged from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet Union, was primarily a conflict between capitalism and communism. It was essentially a conflict to see which economic system would become dominant in the world following the Second World War. The terms "democracy" and "socialism" are the two political systems that usually match with the economic systems of capitalism and communism, although it is possible to have a society that is both democratic and communist.

The first leader of Communist China was Mao Zedong. Mao was the founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the first ruler of the People’s Republic of China, which he governed from 1949 until 1976—when he died. Mao is notable for his role in the Chinese Civil War, leading the attack against the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek. He is also notable for committing numerous atrocities, such as the Cultural Revolution, and for instituting the Great Leap Forward, designed to modernize the Chinese economy and solidify the hold of communism.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, ushered the country out of the Cold War and into an era of reforms and diminishing influence. His two major reforms are referred to as Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost was Gorbachev’s attempts to allow for greater political freedom; Perestroika was his attempt to restructure the soviet economy.

Joseph McCarthy was a United States senator in the late 1940s and early 1950s who famously led the crusade against prominent American communists. This period of American history is often referred to as The Red Scare, and the policy of attacking any known or suspected communists in Congress is called McCarthyism.

The Nationalist Party was led by Chiang Kai-Shek. During the Chinese Civil War the Nationalists faced off against the Communists, led by Mao Zedong. The Nationalists were eventually defeated and set up government in Taiwan.

The Warsaw Pact is the name given to the treaty and alliance formed between the various communist states of Europe and the Soviet Union in response to the signing of NATO between the capitalist states of Western Europe and America.

The fall of the Soviet Union, and therefore the end of the Cold War, occurred in 1991. This represents the end of the great competition between capitalism and communism that had raged for forty-five years since the end of World War Two. Although it is worth noting that there are still communist nations in the world—China and North Korea are two prominent examples.

NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) emerged after the end of the Second World War as the primarily alliance of the capitalist world during the Cold War. It was opposed by the Warsaw Pact, which was signed by the various communist nations of Europe and the Soviet Union. The current state of Russia remains excluded from NATO.

Disarmament is the term used to describe an agreement between two or more nations to downgrade their stockpile of weapons. Particularly, it is used to describe agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Mutually Assured Destruction is the term used to describe the nuclear relationship between the United States of America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Essentially it suggests that because both nations possess stocks of nuclear weapons, warfare is considerably less likely, because if one nation launches a nuclear attack on another nation it will result in the destruction of both nations. Nuclear Non-Proliferation refers to an agreement that no new nations will be allowed to access nuclear weaponry.

In exchange for the Soviet Union removing its missiles from Cuba, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States removed its missiles from Turkey. Its possible you did not know this information, but you should have been able to make a reasonable guess based on the answer choices available. Turkey was a major ally of the United States and Western Europe during the Cold War and was a member of NATO, whereas East Germany, China, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were all countries under either the direct control of the Soviet Union or, in the case of China, under a communist government.

During the early years of the Cold War, the United States and China had almost no diplomatic contact and certainly no trade agreements. China was firmly sided with the Soviet Union against the United States; however, in 1972 President Richard Nixon made a formal visit to China in an attempt to reopen trade between the two nations and normalize relations. The visit is considered the greatest foreign policy success of the Nixon administration.

The Fair Deal was a series of domestic reforms encouraged by President Harry Truman. It represents a sort of extension of the New Deal program of his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Fair Deal was concerned with establishing a higher minimum wage and ending unemployment.

The answer which occurred the most recently is the Vietnam War. The Civil War was fought from 1861 until 1865; the Spanish-American War was fought in 1898; World War Two was fought from 1939 until 1945; The Korean War was fought from 1950 until 1953; the Vietnam War was fought from 1965 until 1976. The Vietnam War began during the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and did not end until after Nixon had been forced out of office by the Watergate scandal.

The Domino Theory was an important part of American foreign policy throughout much of the Cold War. It states that, if one country falls under the influence of communism, the neighboring countries are likely to follow suit. The theory was first suggested by President Eisenhower to try and encourage support for the French forces in Vietnam.